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[40-52] Jame's Maraudon Guide

Submitted by Jame on Sun, 2006-08-13 16:13

Jame's Maraudon Instance Guide

Introduction

Maraudon is a beautiful instance located in Desolace, it is made for a group of 5 players and can be very rewarding when done the right way. It is quite a big instance but the cool thing is that you can do half of it (takes about 3 hours) and the other half another day without having to clear all the way again. Basically the first half of the instance is where you will find and complete the quest that rewards you with the Scepter of Celebras. Right-clicking the scepter will teleport you directly to the 2nd half of Maraudon, where the strongest boss mobs are (and where the best loot is, mostly). Thus making Maraudon a very interesting instance that you can run several times until you got all the rewards you want from it! Follow this guide, and you will

Level recommended

For the first half: 47+

For the 2nd half: 49+

Overall, if you want to be able to kill everything including the last bosses, try to have everyone level 49+, besides the main healer of course, who can be a tad lower.

Group compostion

Healer: Priest or restoration specced druid

Tank: Warrior > Paladin/druid bear

AE class: Mage is the best choice followed by warlock. Try to have one of these, it will really help.

Try to keep it down to two melee classes (Warrior + Rogue for exemple). Maraudon is not so melee friendly, several mobs (like the Princess) are tough for melees.

You MUST have at least one range attack class (Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Shaman, Druid/Priest if they aren't your main healer). The Creeping Sludges will require kiting (will explain that in detail), so you need at least 1 range attack class, preferably two.

[47] Vyletongue Corruption [Not Shareable] From Talendria at Nijel's Point in Desolace. This quest has been made easier since patch 1.12, so go for it.

[51] Corruption of Earth and Seed [Shareable][Main Quest] From Keeper Marandis at Nijel's Point in Desolace.

Horde:

[42] Shadowshard Fragments [Shareable] From Uthel'Nay at the Valley of Spirts in Orgrimmar.

[47] Vyletongue Corruption [Not Shareable] From Vark Battlescar at Shadowprey Village in Desolace. This quest has been made easier since patch 1.12, so go for it.

[51]Corruption of Earth and Seed [Shareable][Main Quest] From Selendra south of Shadowprey Village in Desolace.

Both:

[47] Twisted Evils [Shareable] From Willow in at Kormek's Hut in Desolace (62,39), northeast of the Kodo Graveyard.

[48] The Pariah's Instructions [Not Shareable] From Centaur Pariah in Desolace. He wanders from (50,86) to (43,84), that's in between the Gelkis Village and Mannorok Coven.

Where is Maraudon?

Before going in:

I'd suggest binding yourself in Desolace. At Nijel's Point for Alliance, at Shadowprey Village for Horde. The only way out of Maraudon when you are deep in is to use hearthstone, mage portal or death. So it's much more convenient to hearthstone to desolace so you can turn in your quests after you are done with Maraudon.

Alliance: From Nijel's Point go southwest until the entrance to the Valley of Spears (40,60), which is located west of the Kodo Graveyard. Go through the valley of spears until (38,57), there stands the gate to Maraudon.

Horde: Go east from Shadowprey Village until (29,74), then go north and through the Valley of Spears until (31,61). There stands the meeting stone and the entrance to Maraudon further up.

Walkthrough

1. The Amulet of Spirits and the 1st Kahn

After entering the gates of Maraudon, go through the first tunnel until you find a centaur with the name "The Nameless Prophet". Kill him and loot the Amulet of Spirits from him. You can find The Nameless Prophet anywhere between the entrance and the fork to the crystal tunnels. As soon as you kill The Nameless Prophet he respawns instantly somewhere else.

Put the Amulet of Spirits on a hotkey.

Then go further in and you'll be at the first fork. To the left you'll see purple crystals, to the right orange crystals, and straight ahead is an arch with 2 centaur statues. Go straight ahead until you find a non agressive centaur named Spirit of Kolk. Use the Amulet of Spirits on him, this will make him agressive, kill him and loot the Gem of the First Kahn.

Note: Behind Kolk is a room with a pedestal. It's on this pedestal that you have to stand and click on your Scepter of Celebras to be teleported to the 2nd half of Maraudon. But you don't have the scepter... yet

2. The Orange crystal path

Go back to the fork and this time go to the tunnel with the orange crystals, in the first cave you'll find a friendly NPC centaur named Cavindra, get the quest [49] Legends of Maraudon from her. It is the quest which allows you to forge the Teleport Scepter I told you about before.

Just a bit further in and around the corner to the left you'll find a red pool, if you want to do the quest [47] Vyletongue Corruption, fill up the Cerulean Vial you should have in your inventory (a black potion looking thingy).

Then from the red pool, if you look in the northeast direction, you'll be facing two ways: one to the right going down, and one to the left going slightly up. Take the left one, and go to the end of it (39,57), you'll find the 3rd Kahn there next to a big crystal. Use the Amulet of Spirits on him, kill him and loot the Gem of the 3rd Kahn. From the big crystal look towards the east and you should see a tunnel. Go through this tunnel you'll find the instance portal quickly, zone in.

Now you should follow the orange path (path 1 on the map)

3. To Noxxion

After zoning in, start clearing your way towards the area where Noxxion is.
It's time for your group to take a decision: Do the quest [47] Vyletongue Corruption or not? It's optional, but this quest has been made much easier since patch 1.12, so you should go for it for some easy extra xp reward.

If your group decided to do the [47] Vyletongue Corruption quest, you should be looking for little plants looking like this:

You just have to stand next to one and right-click your Cerulean Vial. These plants are only found on this side of the instance, from here until the poison falls. Everytime you cleanse a plant, 3 elementals will spawn, they are not elite so it's really easy to deal with them.
Basically you have to find 8 of these red plants and do that 8 times to complete the quest, and the whole group gets a quest update for each plant.

On your way down you'll most likely find the 5th Kahn sooner or later, kill him and loot the Gem of the 5th Kahn.

At some point you'll face the following mobs:

If you don't read the following, your group will be destroyed.

Info:Creeping Sludges come in packs of 2, 3 or 4, they must NOT be melee'd. They pulse a 200 dmg poison area attack every 2 seconds to anyone that is in close to them. So imagine 3 of these in a bunch, pulsing 600 dmg every 6 seconds on all of your melees.

How to: Let your mage or warlock do the initial pull with an AoE (Blizzard, Rain of Fire for exemple). The Creeping sludges walk extremely slow, they can be easily kited. (To kite something means to kill it without ever being in melee range, using ranged attacks). Basically have all your classes with range attacks use them (shaman shocks, hunter bow shots, etc) while running these Creeping Sludges in a large circle. This of course means you'll have to have cleared a rather large space before pulling.

They are actually very easy to kill once your group knows the drill, just don't let them get close to you and fire at will!

Once the creeping sludges are split, your melees can go chase one (only if it's far away enough from the others) and melee it fast, if they get low on health they can move away and wait for a heal.

So that's how you deal with Creeping Sludges

Normally, there is only 4 Creeping sludges on your way to the larva spewer, and you should be able to get them by pairs if you pull smart.

After you got those 4 Creeping Sludges clear, take the tunnel to the left and you should be in the room with the Larva Spewer. Pull the two Barbed Lashers in the way and also wait on the centaur patrol if you didn't catch it yet. (2 elite centaurs, which are humanoids so they can be crowd controlled).

You'll be facing a swarm of non-elite larvas and a Larva Spewer. The Larva Spewer spews an elite larva and keeps respawning it so it's useless to kill the elite larva, just let it wander away. When the elite larva is away, pull the small larvas and AE the hell out of them while one person (a melee preferably) goes to the larva spewer and destroys it. (Takes a click and 5 seconds channeling without being interrupted).
One word about AE though, if you have a mage and if that mage uses his/her AE effects like Arcane Explosion in order to kill the bunch of larvas, the mage will take A LOT of damage. So make it clear with your healer that while the mage is using AE on the larvas he needs to be perma spam healed with fast heals and preferably shielded (with PW:S). This is really essential, your healer must pay full attention, he can't be watching TV and start healing after 30 seconds... the mage will loose health rapidly, so brief your healer well.

Once you got the Larva Spewer destroyed, clear your way down to Noxxion.

Noxxion is the toughest boss of the first half of Maraudon, but he's actually quite easy if you got a sharp mage (or warlock) and a decent healer.
Here's how the fight should go:

Tank charges Noxxion and everyone starts damaging him

After about 10 seconds, Noxxion will split into 8 Noxxion Spawns. Your healer (who should be standing back) must shield the mage/warlock immediatly and then focus on healing him. The mage/warlock should immediately start to AE the spawns, the rest of the group must of course help with any ae attack they got.

Once the spawns are dead, Noxxion will repear, your tank must try to get aggro on it as best as he can, and others should use their long cooldown damage abilities at this point. If your group has sufficient dps, Noxxion will die before he gets to split up a second time. If he does split up again, well don't panic, just repeat what you did before and clear the spawns.

Key to this fight is to make sure your healer is standing away from Noxxion when he splits up, so as to not get the initial swarm of elementals, and the rest of the group must get those spawns dead as fast as possible. AEs are of course the best way.

Noxxion mostly drops nature resist gear, but if you are lucky (15% chance) he can drop this very nice caster wand:

Here is the nature resist gear, for the Ahn'Qiraj lovers:

Most importantly, don't forget to loot the Celebrian Rod from Noxxion. Congratulations, your Scepter of Celebras is 1/3 complete!

4. To Razorlash (Optional)

Don't bother with Razorlash unless you are interested in one of the following drops, it's mostly Nature Resist gear, for those who plan to go to Ahn'Qiraj later on, this should be interesting:

If you decide to skip Razorlash, go to the next paragraph. If you decide to go for Razorlash, there isn't much you need to know besides:

If you encounter pulls consisting of 3 Constrictor Vines and 1 Barbed Lasher, make sure you kill the Barbed lasher first, they are really annoying with their AE knockdown ability.

Go backtrack, zone out of the instance, go back to the fork but this time go through the violet crystal tunnel. At the first fork go right, you'll find the other instance portal, don't get in though yet. On the opposite side of the instance portal you'll see a bridge with two blue flames, go over the bridge, after the bridge go left and then a u-turn left again down a small slope which takes you to another bridge (a smaller one). At the other hand of the bridge you'll find a small shrine, and the 2nd Kahn. Kill it and loot the Gem of the 2nd Kahn.

Before you go to the instance portal we passed on the way, kill Shadowshard Smashers or Shadowshard Rumblers (those rock elementals) in the violet crystal cavern until you got 10 Shadowshard Fragments. It's a very quickly done quest as the elementals always drop a fragment, and the whole group can loot it!

When you're done with that, zone in the instance. You should follow the violet path (Path 2 on map)

6. To Lord Vyletongue

The way to Lord Vyletongue shouldn't be a problem. The hardest pulls you'll meet consist of 2 Satyrs (elite) and 4 Imps (non-elite). Let your warrior charge a Satyr and then your casters should go in and AE the imps.

On your way to Lord Vyletongue, you should find the 4th Kahn. Kill it and loot the Gem of the 4th Kahn. Open your inventory and right click one of the gems, they will assemble into the Amulet of Spirit and forge the Amulet of Union. You just completed the quest [48] The Pariah's Instructions (and made some space in your bags by getting rid of the 5 gems).

When you are in front of Lord Vyletongue's building, don't rush in carelessly, there are 2 stealthed satyrs guarding it's entrance, pull them and kill them. Then the only thing you'll be facing will be Lord Vyletongue and his two stealthed guards (those you'll have to fight at the same time as Lord Vyletongue).

Lord Vyletongue is actually a pretty easy fight. If you got a warlock, banish one of the satyrs, kill the other satyr and then kill Lord Vyletongue. If you don't have a warlock, just kill the two stealthed satyrs first and then deal with Lord Vyletongue.

The best way to deal with this battle is to kill the stealthed guards first while your tank is on Lord Vyletongue. Lord Vyletongue actually doesn't hurt that much but is annoying to kill because he teleports about. So save him for last.

Loot the Celebrian Diamond from him, thus making your Scepter of Celebras 2/3rd complete. Lord Vyletongue can also drop some interesting items:

7. Celebras the Cursed

After Lord Vyletongue, keep going until you reach the point marked as "drop off" on the map. You'll have to go through a couple more of those "creeping sludge pulls", but it shouldn't be a problem for your group anymore. If you are lucky on your way to the drop off, you might find Meshlok the Harvester, he is a rare spawn, he looks like a cavern lurker (those ugly treant looking things) and he wanders in the yellow waters before the drop off, as shown on the map. He can drop some good stuff:

Including a decent NR piece:

Sadly he's not there most of the time, but anyway, time to move on.
Go to the "drop off" point and jump down, you might aggro a cavern lurker when jumping down, kill it while staying close to the waterfall. Go west while staying close to the southern wall, you can skip several thrash pulls this way. Keep going until you see Celebras the Cursed.

Celebras the Cursed is guarded by 3 non-elite treants, and during the fight he will attempt to summon more treants. Thankfully Celebras can be interrupted, counterspelled and stunned. So make sure everyone in your group uses their spell interrupting abilities on Celebras so he doesn't get to summon more treants, or you will be swarmed.

No matter what, ignore the treants and just kill Celebras the Cursed as fast as possible, then kill the treants with AEs.

Celebras the Cursed can drop the following items:

Including a nature resist piece:

After Celebras is defeated, he will reappear as a non agressive NPC named Celebras the Redeemed, talk to him, go through his dialogue, take his quest, watch him walk to the altar and forge the Scepter of Celebras, complete the quest and voila!

You now got your Scepter of Celebras, which will allow you in your future Maraudon runs to skip all the previous area and start the instance after Celebras the Cursed!

So now there is about 2-3 hours to go if you want to get all the remaining bosses, including the most important one: Princess Theredras. If your group is still up for 2-3 more hours, go to the next paragraph of the walkthrough. If not, you can get out of maraudon and form another group and directly teleport them to the 2nd half of Maraudon and continue on the next paragraph!

8. Earthsong Falls

This is where you end up after using the Scepter of Celebras from the pedestal behind the 1st Kahn, or after going further past Celebras the Cursed and jumping down the waterfalls. Follow the yellow path from the map for now.

You'll quickly find some Thessaly Hydras roaming around the cavern south of earthsong falls. They hit reasonably hard and have one special ability you must be careful with, they knockback every now and then anyone in too close range. So you want to avoid being knocked back into more of those hydras.Melees: always fight so your back is facing a wall or a safe place (like the waterfalls from where you arrived).Casters: Fight at max casting range so as to not get hit by the knockback.
Clear all the Hydras on your way until you reach the tunnel to the south, and make sure you don't skip any of those hydras, because some of them roam up to the tunnel, you don't want them to add on you while you're already dealing with the next pull.

The next pull consists of 3 Subterranean Diemetradons, they are beasts so they can be sheeped or hibernated. Their special ability is an area effect 10 seconds silence. Casters: Stay at max casting range.

Once you've dealth with the 3 Diemetradon, wait for the first patrol of elementals. Elemental patrols are either composed of 2 Theradrim Guardian or 1 Theradrim Guardian and small elementals (non elite). If you got a warlock in the group, they can banish the elementals, making it easier. If not, you must know that when a big elemental dies, it splits in 4 tiny elementals. What my group usually does is kill the two big elementals and then AE the 8 tiny elementals. It works well.

After you've taken care of the 1st rock elemental patrol, go further in and kill the next 3 pulls which consist of diemetradon again, then go up the slope and wait for the 2nd elem patrol, kill it. Now you have a choice, you can either decide to skip Tinkerer Gizlock or not. If you decide to skip Tinkerer Gizlock, go directly to paragraph #10.

9. Tinkerer Gizlock (Optional)

If you want to kill Tinkerer Gizlock (read: if your group is interested in one of his drops), take the tunnel to the north, the one with snake packs called "Deep Borer" and follow the pink path on the map. These snakes are easy, with or without AEs. After the first snake pull you'll be entering a larger room with a ramp going down, try to get the rock patrol out of the way as soon as possible, then work your way down until you end up facing a goblin named Tinkerer Gizlock.

He is an easy fight, just make sure non-melees stay at max range from him, he is a caster and casts some AEs. He doesn't have much HPs for a boss, burn him down quickly. He drops decent items including a very good caster sword:

After that, go backwards and back on the Princess path, until you reach your next choice. Kill Landslide or not? If you decide to skip Landslide, just go to the last paragraph and stay on the princess path (yellow path on map).

10. Landslide

Go further up the 2nd part of the slope (to the south) and wait on the 3rd elemental patrol, dispatch it. Now you should have some big giants in sight, named Primordial Behemoth. Go over the bridge and kill the first one if he is alone, if not wait for the behemoth patrol to wander off, nothing much to say about these giants besides they hit rather hard.
About the Primordial Behemoth patrol, you should lookout for it but this giant walks really slow, so you should see it coming from afar and be able to pull it solo. After having killed the first giant after the bridge, you can decide either to skip Landslide or to go directly for the princess. If you decide to skip Landslide (nobody in your group wants any of his drops), skip the following and go directly to paragraph #11.

If you do want to kill Landslide, follow the green path from the map, work your way up the slope. Your last pull before Landslide will be 2 giants at the same time, I strongly advise that you assign one tank to each giant before engaging (your secondary tank can be a shaman, paladin, druid, or even a warlock/hunter pet, but just make sure the giant won't be on the loose).

After that you'll be facing Landslide, the giant boss. He hits hard, has a lot of HPs, and has two abilities you must know of:

1. He knockbacks his main target (the person on top of his aggro list, most likely your tank) far away. So your tank must position himself with his back to a wall, that way he won't get punted far away and lose aggro.

2. He does a wide area warstomp, which stuns everyone for a painful 5 seconds. Casters should try to fight Landslide at max range to avoid the stun. Also, make sure to never let your tank go low on health, because if you get stunned at that moment, odds are your tank will die during the 5 sec stun.

Everyone must make sure to control their damage output at the start to let the tank get sufficient time to build a solid aggro. After that they can go all out.

With that in mind, Landslide shouldn't be a problem, and he drops some nice items:

Including this nifty plate helm, which is also good nature resist gear:

11. Princess Theradras and Rotgrip

Go towards Princess Theradras, follow the yellow path. Pull the 4 diemetradons and kill them, then go further in and you'll be entering an open area called "Zaetar's Grave". Wait for the rock elemental patrol and kill it. Then you have to start clearing your way through pairs of giants. You can skip the first 2 behemoths to the left, all the others you will have to kill on your way down the slope leading to Princess Theradras. Shortly you should be facing the charming Princess Theradras. Here is how you kill her:

Abilities:

Every 20 seconds or so she does a point blank area effect with several waves that knockback anyone in melee range and also damage them.

Every now and then she will randomly cast fear on people, it can't be dispelled, but undeads can use will of the forsaken, warriors in berserker stance (not recommended if you are tanking though) can use berserker rage. If you got a dwarf priest with you, he can use fear ward on your tank, it works!

Every now and then she'll throw a rock randomly at a ranged attacker, disrupting their casting.

How to:

Melee classes are heavily crippled in this battle, she keeps pushing them back and damaging them with her ae, so you should only let pure melee classes (Tank, Rogue) in melee. Paladins or Shamans will be more useful standing back and healing or nuking, unless they are the main tank of your group of course.

Melees: when she uses her AE knockback waves, don't even try to fight the knockback and stay close to her, just let her push you away and wait till she's done farting before you go in again.

Casters: stay at long range, you should never get hit by her AE knockback.

Anyway, it is a slow and long fight, probably the hardest battle in Maraudon, but really manageable if you follow the above. Congratulations on killing Princess Theradras and completing the main maraudon quest! The princess also drops nice things, always 2 blue items out of 7, here are some of them:

and the only nature resist item she drops:

After the princess is dead, a ghost centaur named Zaetar's Spirit should appear in the middle of the Princess' lair. Talk to it and get the quest [51] Seed of Life (Dungeon), which you can turn in at Moonglade for extra XP and 1gold 50silver.

Don't go yet, there is still one boss to get, and it's very close. Buff everyone with underwater breathing if you got a warlock in your group, if you don't it's ok, it will just be less comfortable.

Go to the northern waterfall directly next to the princess lair, look down from there before you jump, make sure you don't see a huge crocodile named Rotgrip swimming there before you jump. If the croco is not around, have your whole group jump down there and stay close to the waterfall. Wait for Rotgrip to come close and pull it to this corner. He is an easy fight, he just hits hard and is underwater, no difficulty besides this. Rotgrip is worth killing because he can drop:

and these nature resist boots:

That was all the bosses! Congratulations on clearing Maraudon completely. The only way out is to use Hearthstone or ask a mage for a portal, or to suicide! I hope you enjoyed this guide and the maraudon instance

Note: For the AQ20 / AQ40 nature resist gear farmers, when you go as deep as Landslide or Princess Theradras, the fastest way to go out and reset the instance is definitely to:

Comments

We are recently working on improving the quality of content here on WoW-Pro.com, both by limiting low ranked guides and by moving out of date guides into archives. For more information, see the full news post detailing this process.

This guide needs an update to make sure it is current with patch 4.0. However it still has enough useful information that it will be left in it's proper section as-is.

If someone else would like to adopt the guide, or if you have any questions about this process, feel free to comment here.

The instance guides have to be one of the more challenging ones to maintain though, with all of the itemization changes, class changes, even elite->normal status and level changing of mobs.

I see this guide had one simple change in over a year and a half, so I'm wondering a couple things -

* Might it be better to link the boss and/or items to say somewhere like wowhead to keep information current/keep down the need for such updates? I don't think [most of?] these have the 2.3 boost? I appreciate the levelling guide updates =D

And of course the itemization could be a homework assignment for the reader - as it is, you pack these up very nice and neat.

* Outside suggesting the +/-s of some mechanics, would it be better to keep away from any specific tanking/healing recommendations? e.g. Shaman can be a competent if not desired healer, Prot pallies aggro and taunting has improved dramatically.. obviously they're your thoughts at the time, but I imagine your thoughts would change in lieu of WoW changes.

Maybe highlighting keys of the fight to watch for, key things to mitigate, instead?
You basically already do this anyways, I think players in these games though tend to get tunnel vision at times...

For both of these, Blizzard changes everything too often to keep up Unless you're the type to constantly revisit all these instances with all these changes going on, which could be quite a challenge as it is apparent you're regularly revisiting solo/quest levelling

Just a couple thoughts, I'm about to dive into Mara now with my [Horde PvP] Pally and feel pretty well armed between this guide and wowhead.

I'd suggest binding yourself in Desolace. At Nijel's Point for Alliance, at Shadowprey Village for Horde...'

I think it should be put before the directions to Maraudon as many people (including me) will follow the directions, then read that paragraph and be forced to go back, then return to the entrance... just a little note I thought might make the guide flow better.

I don't think the recommeded level is right...With a group of 5 people it's pretty easy to take down even the princess with a level 45's (I have done it twice, and I've only done princess 3 times). Also, you weren't specific on gear quality. Is the recommended level based on the assumption that there are using mostly(if not all) greens? Because i was grouped with players who had more blues than greens (3 of us had an epic each, PvP bracers FTW!) except for our hunter who only had 2 blues (gun, shoulders). So for someone to have the time to do a full run of mara, the've probably had time to pick up plenty of BoP blues from previous intances before hand and are probably fairly well geared in ZF and Ulda gear.

U forgot the last boss though - Tinkerer Gizlock (goblin pyromaniac) after the Croc and up the halls past the snakes

Here is an easy guide for him

Tank get in there
Healer STAY BACK
DPS stay behind him

He has a directional flame thrower attack that does HEAVY dmg but if you get behind him or just keep moving you can stay out of it. He dies pretty easy and as I remember he drops a BAD ASS pally/shammy shield and a pretty sweet gun... ima go look for links...
...
...
...
...http://www.thottbot.com/?n=400114
He does drop the shield and the gun although in my experience he drops them ALOT more than thottbot sais I would say the gun and shield have a 50/50 chance of dropping

Never seen the epic shoulders drop from hom though... so dont bank on those - then you can go out by killing a few more mobs or hearth or whatever you prefer...

Please note that the quest The Pariah's Instructions
is *required*. If you don't have this quest, then
The Nameless Prophet won't drop the Amulet of Spirits,
and the gems won't drop off the Kahns. This makes
it impossible to get to the second part of the instance.

You can still get to the second half of the instance, but you will have to fight your way through either the orange or purple side first, instead of teleporting to the falls. When you port to the falls, you are at the bottom of the falls that you jump off of if you were to fight your way into that part of the instance.